Odyssey Opera forges a new path

Sunday

Jun 8, 2014 at 12:29 PMJun 8, 2014 at 1:41 PM

By Keith PowersWicked Local Arts Correspondent

Instead of competing during the frenetic concert season, Odyssey Opera is creating its own season.After ambitiously presenting Wagner's "Rienzi" in its inaugural production last September, artistic director Gil Rose's troupe has waited until this month to take the stage again. But now Odyssey Opera does it in a big way, with three concurrent productions at the Boston University Theatre, alternating presentations of Verdi's "Un giorno di regno," Mascagni's "Zanetto," and Wolf-Ferrari's "Il segreto di Susanna" from June 11 to 14."If all the opera troupes in Boston function at the same time, then we're fighting each other," Rose says in a break from his incredible schedule. Preparing one opera score is enough work, but three - "and I'm the only one involved in every show," he says - requires day and night dedication.The three operas are rarities, for sure, but fit nicely into Rose's vision for Odyssey Opera. "You won't see any ‘Carmens' or Don Giovannis,' " Rose says emphatically, "but we will do a series, with a big concert opera in the fall, and a festival-like set of smaller staged works in May or June every year.""Rienzi" certainly fit the bill as a "big concert opera" last September: "now I know what it's like to conduct a six-hour opera," Rose says. Tackling Wagner right off the bat may not have made logistical sense - "we were a little late getting the word out, and it's a big commitment," he admits, but the reviews were uniformly strong."There was a buzz," he says, "there was even a buzz in Europe about it. There wasn't a big house, but we were at the starting point, and we did something that was intimidating. I was happy with the results. I think of it like the first Super Bowl: there were like 20,000 people there, and now a million people claim they were."Rose will follow "Rienzi" with Erich Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" this September as the next major concert opera - "works by well known names, but not the operas they are famous for," he says. But first there's this trio of performances to stage.The three operas, all largely in the Italian tradition, are quite different from each other. Verdi's "Un giorno di regno," his second opera, and first comedy (the next one, which he wrote more than five decades later, was the sensational "Falstaff"), was not initially well received."After that Verdi was at the point of chucking the whole thing as a composer," Rose says. "But then he wrote ‘Nabucco,' and it was a huge success, and ‘Un giorno' was revived, and that was a great success the second time. It's an odd piece. A lot of fast, major key music, and when we think of Verdi we think of alternating major and minor keys. It's a comedy, and Joshua (director Joshua Major) is kind of walking the tightrope between buffo and slapstick. It a very successful comedy, very enjoyable, lots of human qualities."Mascagni had the misfortune of writing his greatest work ("Cavaliere Rusticana") first," he says. "You think he would have repeated the same formula, but he didn't. ‘Zanetto' is a strange piece. It has only two characters, an ex-courtesan and a troubadour, and they alternate singing the entire time. Never together. Very beautiful and unusual."And Wolf-Ferrari was more well known a hundred years ago than he is now. His father was German and his mother was Italian; think of the love child of Strauss and Puccini. ‘Susanna' is a very dated kind of confection in the old Italian buffo style."The heroine's secret is that she smokes. So Victorian. Her husband smells the smoke and assumes she's with another man."I think together, they present two sides of late 19th century Italian opera that a lot of people don't know about," Rose says.Follow @WickedLocalArts on Twitter and Facebook."Un giorno di regno," "Zanetto," "Il segreto di Susanna," all presented by Odyssey OperaWHEN: June 11-14WHERE: Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., BostonTICKETS: $25-$100INFO: 617-933-8600. www.bostontheatrescene.com